We Are an Extension of our Environment

Yesterday while scrolling through my I.G. feed I saw a post made by someone who I had once considered a friend. She and I tried to be close but it became apparent through many hang outs that we’re two very different people. Sad, but still our effort served a purpose.

The post was a picture of her hand followed by a poem she’d written. She’s always been a great poet, passionate and driven in her messages. But the more I read them or she shared them the more I realized it was all about her, all the time. Her pains and sorrows and how people wronged her and continued to wrong her.

This poem in particular talked about how it’s difficult or, “How I hate that it’s so easy for me to gain attention with my frame…hate that it’s so easy for me to grab someone and have them in my domain…” Something to that effect were a couple of the lines.

She went on to discuss within the next few lines how, “[No one who sees her for her surface beauty could ever love her in depth…they’d never be capable of doing so].” I wanted to pass it up but it just…I dunno.

I’m all for people feeling what they feel but feeling pain doesn’t have to mean causing someone else pain. I’m also a feminist and I wanted to ensure that what I was saying wasn’t taken as me trying to tell her to tone it down or be ashamed of her womanhood (it’s thin line I think). I tried my best to let her know that there was nothing wrong with feeling what she was feeling and that yes, some men are immature and only see surface value. But the same can be said of women. It’s human nature to misunderstand what goes on in life, and that misunderstanding translates into miscommunication of feelings and emotions. Especially when someone has been taught to hide from them instead of let them free.

I was irked, not just as a man but a person. In the end I expressed how, “…just because someone might not be able to see the depth of you right away doesn’t mean they’re incapable of it in the future. Why prematurely write them off and assume they can’t handle you?”

She, again, had a great message in the poem but instead of expanding on it she put the entire focus on her. It became all about how “no one would ever be” on her level and that they’d “never be able to fully love” her. “What do I do when they fall for me and I have no intention of loving them back?”

To me, it’s sad and disheartening to have someone, anyone, continue to think that Love has to be manipulated. That Love is in some way out of reach because of unrealistic expectations.

I also expressed that maybe the fear she was seeing in this guy was a fear she hadn’t fully dealt with within herself. “It’s not a matter of ‘I’ or ‘Me’ but WE. Your perception is reflected in him and vice versa…”

We’re all extensions of our environment. It is within us as we are within it; it lives so that we can live and we live so that it can live. I think I’m just tired of people thinking everything somehow has to revolve around them. And seeing this poem was the tipping point for me, especially since this person had constantly complained about me to me and any guy she met to me, and they all had the exact same “problems”.

I’ve since stopped following her on social media. As I said, we’re two very different people. I’m motivated by connectivity and she seems to be only motivated by maintaining the balance on her pedestal. I’m not one to complain, especially about people but as I said, I’m just tired of selfishness.

I’m tired of blind and jaded truths. I’ve never been one to call them out before but, it feels like it’s time for that to change.